News, ideas and a software CEO's thoughts from 25 years in the industry.

ERP: So What’s In It For YOU?

In our two prior posts (the first here, the second here) we’ve been talking about how small to midsize businesses use business management software to improve their operations, cut costs, and move toward a benchmark status of “best in class” company.

Today, a quick recap of a few key benefits – the reasons companies need ERP:

1. As noted in our previous post, over three-fourths of these “best companies” use ERP and report “better than average” customer satisfaction. What better way to attain best in class status?

2. An ERP implementation can have a dramatic effect on how well you serve your customers. Moreover, done right, ERP can include self-service components, thus achieving the holy grail of being easier to do business with even as you are cutting your costs to do so. Self-service items like customer portals to check order status and automatic triggers for customer notifications are just two areas where software can fully automate an otherwise manual (i.e., human) function which, quite frankly, all too often doesn’t get done – or doesn’t get done well.

3. Operational efficiencies gained by ERP deployment (like order tracking and scheduling, among many others) impact your standing with your customers as well as your ability to cut costs.

4. As you streamline processes, you can improve response times. And again, you can do this, even as you reduce costs.

5. You gain more visibility into business processes – everything from production work-in-process to quote-to-cash monitoring, from sales pipeline visibility to repair and warranty tracking. In reporting. In queries, inquiries and drilldowns. It’s all about improved visibility for management.

6. The process of implementing ERP, when done right, necessarily includes the analysis required to properly align your strategy, your technology, and your software. So you find yourself aligning business capabilities with business requirements — as you prepare to follow through then with ERP software.

These are some of the ways companies get to “best-in-class.” In all these areas and more, ERP software is the tool that guides your business, the engine that keeps the other parts moving, the lifeblood that guides and monitors day to day activities.